There are many modern electronic devices that employ touch pads, buttons, keys, and/or touch screens for user input. Non-limiting examples are cell phones, music and video players, electronic games, personal digital assistants (PDSs), portable computers and microcomputers, various controllers and other consumer and commercial, medical and industrial electronic devices. The term “electrode” singular or plural is used herein to refer to these various input elements (e.g., touch-pads, buttons, keys, touch screens, any kind of switches, etc.) whether physical (e.g., an actual structural element) or virtual (e.g., an image on a screen or other display) responsive to a user input. Arrays of such electrodes in either physical or virtual form are often referred to as keyboards or keypads. It is often the case that such devices have arrays of multiple input electrodes leaving little or no space for a larger electrode or sensor capable of providing general proximity detection. Such general proximity detection is useful, for example, to determine that a user's finger or input stylus is approaching the unit or the electrode array, even before it can be sensed by an individual electrode or, for example, in the case of a cell phone or the like, when the unit is being moved toward the side of one's head or brought close to an ear. This capability has not been available in the prior art for devices whose crowded electrode arrays allow little or no space for a separate large area general proximity detection element and is much desired. Thus, there is an ongoing need for means and methods by which a general proximity detection capability can be incorporated in an electronic device even when its crowded nature prevents a large area proximity detection element from being included or so limits its area that its effectiveness is undesirably reduced.